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Meet Kerry Adrienne, Talk Mermaids, Win a Kindle!

At Authors After Dark last year, I had the pleasure of meeting author Kerry Adrienne in person, and she’s full of all kinds of awesomeness! Plus, she has a brand new book out today, STORM DAMAGED, that has mermaids in it. I don’t think her mermaids are related to Rene, but ya never know. Warning: As always, this is a PG-13 blog; today’s book is considered erotic romance.

First, a little about Kerry, represented by Marisa Corvisiero with the Corvisiero Literary Agency. Kerry loves history and spends large amounts of time wondering about people who lived and walked on Earth in the past. She’s a mom to three daughters, six cats, and various small animals. Her husband says she’s a marketer’s dream, as she often believes everything she hears—at least initially. Her shoe horde will attest to her fine shopping skills. In addition to writing, Kerry loves to sew (costumes and cosplay, especially), draw, paint, make chainmail, and play guitar. Her new love is her Mini Cooper Convertible, Sheldon, and they have already gone on many adventures. They travel to as many concerts as they can, especially Green Day and Marilyn Manson. You can visit Kerry’s much-neglected costuming blog here: http://cloakandcostume.blogspot.com/ Maybe she’ll have time to update it soon.Connect with Kerry: Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Amazon | Goodreads

About the book: STORM DAMAGED: In a world where humans don’t know mermaids exist, Mari leaves her home in the ocean to escape her mother, her betrothed, and her tribe’s expectations in order to make a go of independence on land. Chase, former Navy diver and self-appointed curmudgeon-who-isn’t-worthy-of-love, lost his brother in a freak diving accident and now fears the ocean he once loved….When a hurricane threatens, they have to work together to save everything they’ve worked so hard to build. With Mari’s betrothed on the rampage over a centuries-old vendetta, the storm isn’t the worst thing they’ll have to face.

Storm Damaged wasn’t my first novel about mermaids, because I really find mermaids fascinating. I call Storm Damaged “mermaid-lite” since 98% of it takes place on land. I didn’t really have to address talking underwater or other things that take place underwater. I mention it in passing, but I don’t show it. I do show the heroine, Mari, shift into a mermaid and I do show other mermaids in the book, but mostly, I would consider the book a contemporary erotic romance.

My mermaids do live in tribes and have a royalty structure. In fact, at the beginning of the book, Mari is betrothed to a merman from another tribe—though she has no intention of marrying him. She’s rescued a Navy diver who ran into a sea monster on a dive, the same dive that killed his brother. Now, the diver, Chase, has PTSD and has a hard time around water. He feels like he should have been able to save his brother. He doesn’t remember that Mari saved him.

Now, he owns a bar on the shore and Mari rents out a small touristy shop in the same building. Chase is intent on moving inland and has told Mari she has to relocate. Meanwhile, a storm is forming off the coast. Mari plans to wait out the storm under the water, but when Chase is stuck on land, they both end up riding out the hurricane on land.

The most difficult issue I ran into in writing Storm Damaged came with trying to figure out how much to include the ocean and underwater scenes with mermaids. Though it is very appealing to do so, it can be quite complex and the mythos has to be nailed down pretty well. How will her human mate breathe underwater? How will he visit her tribe? How will communication go underwater?

I felt like the Outer Banks were the perfect location to set the book. We stay in a house on Hatteras every summer, and it is glorious. Peaceful, quiet, and not very commercial. It feels like another land. In some places, the islands are barely wider than the road you are traveling on, and when you reach the farthest point, you’re a good fifty miles from the mainland. The tide is strong and the fish and dolphins are plentiful. I have no doubt that if you watched long enough, you’d see a mermaid swimming by.

Thanks, Kerry! I haven’t been to the Outer Banks, unfortunately, but it sounds similar to Cedar Key in Florida, and I can definitely see mermaids and mermen hanging out there.

Follow Kerry’s week-long tour (today through Friday) and enter to win a new Kindle. You can enter below for this blog, and can find the tour stops and links at the top of the TBR Junction tab at the top of this site.

You can also win a TBR book box from me by leaving a comment: What is your favorite mermaid/merman book or series or character (and no, you don’t have to say Rene!). A “book box” is a box containing multiple books from my TBR pile 🙂

About Suzanne Johnson

Author of urban and paranormal fantasy and romantic suspense, currently living in Auburn, Alabama. Author of the Sentinels of New Orleans series (Royal Street; River Road: Elysian Fields, Pirate's Alley, and Belle Chasse (Nov 2016). Writing as Susannah Sandlin, she is the author of the Penton Legacy series (Redemption; Absolution; Omega; Storm Force; Allegiance); The Collectors series (Lovely, Dark, and Deep; Deadly, Calm, and Cold); and the upcoming Wilds of the Bayou series (Book 1, Wild Man's Curse) releases April 2016).

Ariel is my childhood favorite, but there is another mermaid from a YA book I read a couple years ago and that book was just phenomenal. It has mermaids, ghosts, a family curse, a century-long intrigue… Just awesome! It’s Monstrous Beauty by Elizabeth Fama and I highly recommend it if my short description is remotely interesting to you!